“Taisei is a free bullet hell game for Windows PCs, Macs and Linux devices. It features multiple stages and bosses, and four difficulty levels to ensure that anyone can play it. Beginners should definitely start with the easy difficultly level as it is difficult enough already for inexperienced gamers”
For Arch Linux users this seems to also be available straight from the AUR. Gonna give it a spin later as I’ve been craving for a bullet hell game for a while now.
Wait, how is this kosher? It’s a clone of Touhou Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, but looks and sounds really bad. The proper game is still available for purchase and runs fine on modern machines, though if you want it in English you’d have to rely on a fan translation patch.
Then they have the gall to complain about someone making a ‘bad reskin’ from their bad reskin just because they were trying to make money out of it.
A while ago we have learned that somebody created a bad reskin of an old version of our game and is selling it full of microtransactions on the iOS App Store. We feel very sorry for everybody who bought a game they could have had significantly better for free. Please help spread the word about this. Taisei is the original and will always remain free!
I don’t know, is “it’s given away for free” some sort of defence? That should absolve all piracy then.
Support Zun and get the proper game. To be quite honest I bet even Zun would prefer you pirated his game and experienced his works instead of this pale imitation.
Embodiment of Scarlet Devil’s official site where you can download trial version and patch notes. The game can be purchased from Amazon if you want to or various doujin sites.
I shall compile for you a comprehensive answer to that question later tonight. But soon andersonjph will be streaming moonlighters on twitch and I wish to catch that stream, a not so subtle plug for my favourite streamer.
Most mechanics aren’t protected by copyright, so you can’t sue a game just for being similar. That said, the game has Touhou characters which is IP infringement.
Having now researched a bit deeper into what this… thing really is. It’s not a a clone of a Touhou game, it is a mish mash of several of the most popular levels and fights from ALL the touhou games. It is very clearly not just a game in a very narrowly defined genre that one might think is merely similar, no they are using touhou characters, names, designs and where they could manage mechanics. They clearly couldn’t program the correct patterns to many attacks and ended up either skipping some entirely or creating bad versions of the originals while also attaching the original’s names to their patterns.
It is also clear from their site that this is not merely inspired by touhou it is a conscious attempt at ‘recreating’ the games.
Taisei (lit. Occident) is a fan-made Open Source clone of the Tōhō series, written in C using SDL/OpenGL.
Here is a screen from the Taisei video upon which I’ve put a few notations
Here’s “the same” screen from Touhou Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
① The player character and the right side border is clearly depicting Marisa Kirisame
② The spell card in effect at this point in the fight, spell card #6 “Perfect Freeze”
③ Side border depicting Remilia Scarlet, the main protagonist of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil.
⑨ バカ
If you want to play a bullet hell game, for Kanako’s sake play some proper stuff. There are a few decent ones on steam these days, latest Touhou title comes to mind but there are other choice options as well.
@Fraggles, thanks for the info! And all the links!
I really enjoy these types of games. They require intense focus, and that’s good for me. Hyper focusing great for ADHD brain. They can also be quite beautiful.
One of my favorite games is Ikaruga. Although not super pretty and colorful, I like the polarity switching mechanic a lot. It’s also co-op.
I like the conversation that’s going on here. Even though it started with a questionable game, It’s evolved into a interesting topic, and Fraggles has provided some great links.
I’ll provide one more for my favorite bullet hell.
I was going to say some things about the game’s mechanics, but the description in the onebox pretty much says what I was going to say.
I still gotta try the Touhou games. I know they’re very beloved.
OK I edited the OP with references to @Fraggles comments.
This reminds me of an instance back in 2007. It’s a bit different so I am so glad I got a copy of the game before “the game was put on hiatus to respect Atari’s Pong trademark.” I really never understood why… because the game itself was an “taking an LSD trip on the PC”… Nothing like the tennis boring Atari pong.
Here’s a YouTube video…It has a disclaimer!!! If you are prone to epilepsy, please stay away from this game.
I don’t like the idea of trademarks on games’ mechanics. If they had used pencils for paddles and called it Plasma Boing Boing, they would’ve been fine. They put their own fresh spin on Pong and made it unique.
It’s the same thing I love about song covers when the artist re-imagines the song rather than just playing the original song. Put in your own style, add a new guitar solo, change things up, make it your own.
don’t think i’ll ever understand peoples fascination with bullet hells, i mean, “hell” is literally part of it’s genre definer…
pretty sure it’s the game type that stresses me out the most, way too much on screen for me to cope with
especially the ones that lull you into a false sense of security, taking it “easy” on you for a few mins/stages, before they suddenly ramp it up to the aforementioned “hell lvls” and obliterate the screen in pixels, short circuiting your synapses, -while still demanding nano-split-second timings and microns precision
how people don’t need a vacation at a “health spa” after that i don’t fathom, stressus ultras maxus
and ofc watching someone breeze right through it blows my perception of reality right out of the water
heck i found raptor “hard enough” for a shmup without hyperventilating -anything more and i’d definitely need a stay somewhere with professional treatment
I think that’s what I like about it. My mind is always way too active, it’s hard to cope with life. When I’m in these “hells”, I can’t think about anything else.
The trick is to not look at it, you only focus on what’s in the immediate vicinity of your character and what the boss is doing let everything else be in the peripheral. You will soon find that your brain starts reading the patterns on it’s own and you’ll get this weird sensation of precognition because you somehow starts knowing what is about to come at you before “you” see it. It’s a really interesting feeling. It probably comes easier to some than others but I’m pretty sure it’s possible for anyone, pattern recognition is one of our very basic features after all.
-anything more and i’d definitely need a stay somewhere with professional treatment
Thank you! 
